The often impassioned nature of environmental conflicts can be attributed to the fact that they are bound up with our sense of personal and social identity. Environmental identity--how we orient ourselves to the natural world--leads us to personalize abstract global issues and take action (or not) according to our sense of who we are. We may know about the greenhouse effect--but can we give up …
An argument that individuals and collectives form memories by analogous processes and a case study of collective retrograde amnesia.We form individual memories by a process known as consolidation: the conversion of immediate and fleeting bits of information into a stable and accessible representation of facts and events. These memories provide a version of the past that helps us navigate the pr…
Why you are more than just a brain, more than just a brain-and-body, and more than all your assumptions about who you are. Who are you Are you just a brain A brain and a body All the things you have done and the friends you have made Many of us assume that who we really are is something deep inside us, an inner sanctuary that contains our true selves. In Who You Are , Michael Spivey argues that…
"The separateness and connection of individuals is perhaps the central question of human life: What, exactly, is my individuality? To what degree is it unique? To what degree can it be shared, and how? To the many philosophical and literary speculations about these topics over time, modern science has added the curious twist of quantum theory, which requires that the elementary particles of whi…